Invincible Dad-Chapter 452 Taotie, Urgent Matter, Come Quickly!_1
"A Recording Jade Slip?" Xu Lai furrowed his brows slightly. When Fairy Qing Yuan gave him this hairpin, she had never mentioned leaving something special inside for him. He took out the Jade Slip and probed it with his Divine Sense.
Soon, his pupils constricted. The Jade Slip contained only a single sentence and a recorded image.
"Three years ago, when I visited the site of the Old Heavenly Court, I saw three people lingering at the Sect Gate. I couldn’t discern their cultivation boundaries; they were quite mysterious."
Before Ruan Tang, the only confidante to whom Xu Lai could speak about his past without reservation was Fairy Qing Yuan. In fact, Fairy Qing Yuan had visited the Old Heavenly Court more than once to pay respects to Xu Lai’s fallen Sect.
But what caught Xu Lai’s attention the most was that he knew two of those three people!
One was Jing Ke. The other was the middle-aged Taoist who had given two Jade Slips to the ordinary man who had planted all the plum trees.
The third was a stunningly beautiful woman with bright eyes and pearly teeth, yet the sight of her inexplicably made Xu Lai tremble. This was because she wore an Identity Token at her waist, on which was inscribed a single, simple character: Yu!
Xu Lai had a token just like it. Both of his Senior Brothers had one too. In fact, they all had an Identity Token engraved with their surname, personally carved by their Master!
Even after nearly 100,000 years, Xu Lai recognized it at a glance. He had once searched the Mass Burial Mound for nine whole years. Back then, he hadn’t found the bodies of his Master or Senior Brothers and Sister, nor any of their Identity Tokens. All he found was a blood-stained scrap of his Senior Sister’s clothing.
An Identity Token is such a personal item... How could it be on this strange woman?
Xu Lai narrowed his eyes, the image of his Senior Sister, Yu Guiwan, flooding his mind.
"Taotie, something urgent has come up! Get here, quickly!" Xu Lai sent the message with his Divine Sense.
Taotie was strolling through a shopping street in East Sea City, planning to buy some gifts, when he received the message. He instantly teleported to the backyard of Haitang Court.
"Supreme Emperor, what is it?" Taotie was astonished. The Supreme Emperor was engulfed in a murderous aura, and Taotie could feel his agitated state. How many tens of thousands of years had it been? This was the first time he had ever seen the Supreme Emperor lose his composure to such a degree!
Xu Lai tossed Taotie the Recording Jade Slip left by Fairy Qing Yuan. The latter caught it, puzzled. After viewing its contents, his scalp went numb. "Supreme Emperor, that Identity Token... could it belong to your Senior Sister?"
"Yes," Xu Lai replied gravely. He then briefly told Taotie about Jing Ke, causing the Divine General to gasp.
Although Taotie was a brute, even he could sense that things were not as simple as they seemed.
This Jing Ke... what are his origins?
While Taotie was scratching his head, deep in thought, Xu Lai was already communicating with Fairy Qing Yuan across countless light-years via his Divine Sense, asking about the three individuals. But he learned nothing new.
Fairy Qing Yuan offered to conduct a comprehensive search for the trio in the Eastern Immortal Domain, but after some thought, Xu Lai declined. For one, he didn’t want to alert them. For another... the origin of his Senior Sister’s Identity Token was simply too strange.
If she’d acquired it by chance, why would that beautiful woman appear outside the Sect Gate of the Old Heavenly Court with Jing Ke and that unknown Taoist? If it wasn’t by chance, then it must have been a gift from my Senior Sister. In that case, could Senior Sister, who was thrown into the Mass Burial Mound by Hehuan Valley, still be alive? Or did she die long ago, and the token was given to the woman by Jing Ke and the Taoist? If so, what was the point?
Xu Lai’s mind raced as he deduced all the possibilities, but he found his calculations blocked by certain laws.
"You dare to obstruct what I, Xu Lai, wish to divine?" Xu Lai forcefully shattered the obstructing laws, only to find the result was a complete blank.
He couldn’t divine the fates of Jing Ke and the other two! It was as if some mysterious existence had completely erased their traces from the world.
"Interesting." Xu Lai frowned.
The three of them were definitely not in the Emperor Realm. Yet he, a mighty Emperor, couldn’t deduce anything about them. On the contrary, two years ago, they had managed to predict where he would be this year. This was truly intriguing.
Taotie also felt the entire situation reeked of strangeness. He hesitated before asking, "Supreme Emperor, who could be behind this? Could it be one of those undying old monsters from the major Holy Lands?"
Every Holy Land, Tao Lineage, and Forbidden Land has powerful experts sealed within Dao Endowment. They might be chosen prodigies from one or two Eons ago, or perhaps some influential figure from ten Eons ago. But the limit is ten Eons at most, because the Dao Endowment can only seal a life for ten million years. After all, the price for being sealed is one’s lifespan.
Being sealed for one Eon consumes a tenth of one’s lifespan. Being sealed for three Eons consumes three-tenths. This loss cannot be restored, even with a breakthrough in one’s cultivation realm.
The shortest-lived Great Emperor in history, a prodigy from nine Eons ago, lived for less than 100,000 years.
While these sealed individuals are not Great Emperors, they were all peers capable of contending with a Great Emperor in his youth. It was just that in their Eon, someone else achieved the Emperor Realm first!
It’s just like the present. Twenty thousand years after Xu Lai became an Emperor, a newborn from a major clan in the Immortal Domain was born with talent unseen for hundreds of Eons—the terrifying Void Hundun Physique. However, his ultimate potential is already capped at the peak of the Quasi-Emperor realm.
This bearer of the Void Hundun Physique has two choices. He can either live his life as a backdrop for Xu Lai, destined to gaze up at his back from birth until death. Or, he can choose to be sealed away for a million, or even tens of millions of years, to compete for the chance to become an Emperor against future generations, or even predecessors from a past age! A third, more desperate option, is to venture into the Immortal Domain’s forbidden lands—like the Samsara Sea or the ethereal Nine Kings’ Palace—in search of a sliver of opportunity.
Only peerless prodigies or monstrous talents are qualified to be sealed in Dao Endowment, which was why Taotie asked his question.
Xu Lai remained silent. The one who obstructed his divination had to be a cultivator of the same realm.
Could it be the owner of that delicate white hand, the one that appeared when I imprisoned the Faceless Demon in the Soul Candle? Not in the Emperor Realm, yet possessing the combat power of one!
"Senior Sister, Master... are you... still alive?" A flicker of confusion crossed Xu Lai’s eyes.
But he also knew that 100,000 years had passed. If his Master and seniors hadn’t died at the hands of the Hehuan Valley cultivators back then, they would have likely perished in the river of time by now, unless they had broken through to the Immortal Venerable Realm.
"Supreme Emperor, I will return to the Immortal Domain to investigate immediately," Taotie said respectfully, clasping his fist in a bow.
"There’s no need," Xu Lai said, shaking his head. "Jing Ke will show up again." 𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢
Jing Ke! This man from the history of Hua Country on Earth, famous for the legendary tale of his attempt to assassinate the King of Qin, was an absolute enigma. Now, Xu Lai was genuinely interested in him. What kind of man was this, to lay his schemes on Earth and also at my former Sect?
Xu Lai closed his eyes, murmuring softly, "What is it that you’re truly after?"
"Hey!" At that moment, Xu Yiyi opened the back door. Her eyes lit up when she saw Taotie. "Uncle Taotie, when did you get here?"
"Er, just now," Taotie replied hastily.
"Oh." Yiyi looked around expectantly. "Did Yun Jin come too?"
At the mention of that Little Glutton from his clan, the First Divine General’s mouth twitched. Just recently, after Yun Jin beat up all the youths in the clan who wouldn’t listen to her, the Little Glutton had gone on to lead the young prodigies of the Taotie Clan in nearly turning the entire Immortal Domain upside down...
But the First Divine General didn’t dare mention any of this to Xu Lai. After all, Yun Jin was conquering the world in the name of Empress Yiyi.
Xu Yiyi had no idea that on The Other Shore, across the distant starry skies, her name alone was enough to make any young expert tremble in fear, even though she had never once made an appearance there.
